


Till Now (always got by on my own)

by ginnywrites



Category: White Collar
Genre: Background Relationships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Gen, Kink Negotiation, Multi, Non-Sexual Age Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:01:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27564205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginnywrites/pseuds/ginnywrites
Summary: In 2x13, Peter tells Neal, “If ever you do decide to grow up, you should realize this one thing: You can either be a con or a man. You can't be both.” Neal’s not quite ready to grow up yet, but now he has Peter and El to help him along the way.
Relationships: Elizabeth Burke & Peter Burke & Neal Caffrey, Elizabeth Burke/Peter Burke, Elizabeth Burke/Peter Burke/Neal Caffrey
Comments: 8
Kudos: 56





	Till Now (always got by on my own)

**Author's Note:**

> Set in season 2-ish. I’ve never written ageplay before, but this fic wanted to be written, so I hope I did okay! Title borrowed lovingly from “Alone” by Heart (don’t laugh!), because I do so love that song and also because I felt like “always got by on my own” fits.

“You know, Peter, if you wanted me to call you daddy, all you had to do was ask,” Neal says, his grin a mile wide.

Peter sighs. This is why he’d waited to bring it up. In a parked car in front of his house in the rain, sitting side by side, non-confrontational, close enough to be intimate but not so closed in that Neal would feel trapped. And yet, here’s Neal still running, still deflecting.

“That’s not what this is about, and you know that,” Peter says. “It’s new for you, and it’s new for El and me, too. But if you’re interested, the offer is there.”

“Feeling paternal?” Neal asks.

“Something like that,” Peter says. “Oh, come on, Neal. Even I hear people saying how you’re never gonna grow up—”

Neal scoffs. “I’m _very_ grown up, thanks.”

Peter resists the urge to point out that that’s not a very grown up phrase to say. Instead, he says, “El and I thought it’d be nice for you to have a safe space to explore childhood again. You don’t have to tell us everything, but I know you didn’t have the easiest childhood. So, if you’re interested, you just… give us the signal.”

Neal stays quiet long enough that Peter thinks that’s the end of it. He clears his throat and takes the key out of the ignition, and he’s about to get out of the car.

“Are you?” Neal asks, and Peter freezes.

“Am I what?”

“Are you interested,” Neal clarifies. He sounds uncomfortable, but he’s looking right at Peter, his stare intense and unblinking. “Because I can’t— I won’t do this if you feel like— if you’re doing this out of, I don’t know, _obligation_ or—”

“We’re interested,” Peter says, trying his best to be firm and reassuring, and he watches Neal’s face and shoulders and expression go through a quick transformation, covering up the brief moment of vulnerability. “But we need to lay down some rules—”

“Rules, schmules,” Neal says, grinning again, bright and infectious, getting out of the car. “So is that a yes on the daddy thing, or…?”

* * *

They talk a few times, enough to give El ideas for things to buy, enough for them to insist Neal sets a safeword, but it’s weeks before they have a chance to do anything about it.

It’s a chilly autumn Saturday morning when Neal rings the doorbell, breath fogging in the air and hands jammed into his coat pockets, blue eyes wide.

“You’re up early,” El says, letting him in. “Coffee?”

Neal shakes his head. “You know the thing we talked about, can we— I know this is out of the blue, but—”

El puts a finger to his lips and smiles, understanding. “Come on in, Neal. Do you want breakfast?”

She takes his coat and ruffles his hair, and Satchmo comes over to greet him. Neal busies himself kneeling down and petting Satchmo, giving him scritches around his ears and neck just where he likes them.

“Neal,” she says, nudging his shoulder gently. “Breakfast?”

When he shakes his head, she doesn’t press the issue. “Where’s Peter?” he asks.

“Shower,” she says. “Come on, I’ll get you something to change into.”

She gets him a pair of his own pajama pants and one of Peter’s sweaters and puts him in the guest room to get changed. In the meantime, she has a quick murmured discussion with Peter and makes it back just in time for Neal to open the door and show her the too-long sleeves, cheeks faintly pink.

She rolls up the cuffs for him and kisses his cheek. “Do you want to draw while we wait for Peter? I got you some crayons.”

Neal still looks uncertain. It’s not a look she catches on him often; he looks like he’s caught between roles and hasn’t decided which one to settle into yet. But he nods, and his eyes light up when he sees the big box of crayons she’s gotten him. She clears the coffee table for him and lays out a few sheets of paper, and he sits down cross-legged on the floor and gets to work.

He’s still working studiously on the drawing when Peter comes downstairs.

“Morning, El,” he says, with a kiss for her. “Morning, Neal.”

Neal looks up. “Morning—”

—And then looks down, the bitten-off end of his sentence trapped somewhere in his chest. “This isn’t _working,_ ” he says, shoving the paper and crayons aside and running his hands through his hair. Satchmo whines at his feet.

“Well, what are you drawing?” El tries.

Neal shakes his head. “No, not the drawing. _This,_ this childhood thing, it’s not _working,_ I can’t do it.”

El and Peter share a glance over his head. There’s a quick silent conversation in eyebrows and glances, and then Peter crouches down next to him and puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Neal, look at me.”

When he does, he looks so frustrated he might cry.

“Do you trust me? Do you trust me and El?” Peter asks.

Neal nods.

It’s progress, and he hasn’t safeworded. Peter rubs his shoulder. “Do you want to try something else, or are you done?”

Neal sniffs and rubs his face with the back of his hand. “Try something else,” he mumbles.

“Come sit up here with me,” El says, patting the seat next to her on the sofa.

Neal straightens up and sits next to her carefully, but she pulls him in close and tucks his head against her shoulder. Peter sandwiches him in on his other side, arm stretched out along the back of the sofa.

“I thought we could read,” El says.

“ _The Adventures of Robin Hood_ ,” she and Neal say at the same time.

Neal cracks a smile, and El opens the book and starts reading. “ _Many years ago in England, when good King Henry II sat on the throne, a famous outlaw lived in Sherwood Forest near the town of Nottingham. His name was Robin Hood..._ ”

She and Peter do the voices, and she feels Neal relax against her as they read. When she looks down to turn the page, something in his face has changed. He’s more open, more vulnerable. Her heart clenches, and she keeps reading, before he can notice that she’s noticed.

They pause at the end of a chapter, mostly because Peter’s stomach has started growling, but none of them make a move to get up right away. Neal is snuggled in close to El’s side, and she might think he was asleep if it weren’t for his wide blue eyes flicking between her and the book.

“Aunt El?” Neal asks quietly, staring hard at the book.

El rubs his shoulder and blinks hard against the sudden warm rush of emotion in her chest. “What is it, honey?”

“Robin Hood isn’t a bad person, right?”

“I’d say he’s one of the good guys,” El says, with a sinking feeling about where this is going. She tries to hug Neal tighter.

Neal chews his bottom lip and asks, a little softer, “Do you think… do you think thieves can be good people?”

“Of course!” El tries to look him in the eye, but he just ducks his head. “Neal, of course thieves can be good people.”

“But stealing is wrong,” Neal says.

“Yes,” El says, carefully. “Yes, stealing is wrong. But doing a bad thing doesn’t make you a bad person. When we do something wrong, we apologize, and we make up for it. And then we keep trying to do the right thing.”

“It’s not always easy to do the right thing,” Peter adds. Neal looks up at him in surprise, and Peter kisses his temple. “Yeah, believe me, I know. But we’re here to help you with that, Neal. So… so you come to us. If you’re ever having a hard time with it, or with anything. You come to us, and we’ll help you.”

Neal rolls over and catches Peter in a full-body hug, face pressed into his neck. He’s stretched so tight with tension that he’s _shaking_ , hands balled up into fists, breathing in quick little gasps. Peter rubs his back, broad hands tracing big, slow circles up and down, and El strokes his hair.

“You’re okay,” Peter says. “I’ve got you. You’re okay.”

Inch by cautious inch, Neal relaxes. The shaking slows and stops, and he sinks down against Peter with one last sigh. Peter’s stomach chooses that moment to growl again, and Neal sits up with a wet laugh.

“Sounds like someone needs pancakes,” El says.

“A lot of pancakes,” Neal says solemnly, and his stomach growls too.

“Oh, a lot of pancakes, huh?” Peter grabs Neal around the middle and tosses him back against the cushions, tickling him while Neal laughs and laughs.

“Stop— stop, I’m gonna— nooo, stop, I wanna help with the pancakes,” Neal gasps out.

“I think that means you have to let him go,” El says. “I need my little helper in the kitchen.”

Peter helps him up and kisses his forehead before sending him off with El. “Can I help, too?”

El smiles at him and leans in to whisper secretively to Neal while she ties an apron around his waist and rolls his sweater sleeves up some more. “I don’t know, Neal, what do you think? Can he help too?”

Neal nods. “The more the merrier.”

Neal’s a very tactile person, and even more so when he’s like this. There’s not a second that goes by in the kitchen that he’s not hugging one of them or clinging to one of their arms, even when the bacon grease almost scalds him. Peter looks like he’s about to scold, but El just pulls Neal away from the stove and puts him to work plating the pancakes.

“How many pancakes for me?” she asks.

“Three,” Neal says, and counts them out carefully.

“And Peter?”

“Three.”

“Even though you said he needed a lot of pancakes?” El asks.

“He can get seconds,” Neal says. “We have enough for seconds.”

There’s a story there, but Neal looks so happy, she doesn’t want to push it. It’ll come up if it needs to come up. “And how many for you?” El asks.

“Three!” Neal finishes.

“Do you want to come look in the fridge and see what we can put on top of our pancakes?”

Neal lights up.

He makes a heart out of raspberries for El, and matching smiley faces for himself and Peter— blueberries for eyes and banana slices for smiles. Peter comes over and admires their work for a moment before he puts a bacon mustache on his and Neal’s pancakes.

“Now they’re perfect,” Neal says.

After breakfast, Neal settles down with his crayons and paper again, much more calm and relaxed than when they’d started this morning. So relaxed, actually, that he falls asleep holding onto a crayon, head pillowed on his arms on the coffee table. Satchmo’s got his head in Neal’s lap and seems pretty pleased about the situation, but El’s pretty sure Neal is going to get a back or neck cramp from sleeping like that.

She tries to wake him up just enough to get him to move, but all she gets is a mumbled “five more minutes.”

Peter doesn’t have much more success, but he manages to get Neal turned around and lifted up onto the sofa, where he curls up around a pillow and El tucks him in with a soft throw blanket.

“ _A Sunday on La Grande Jatte_ ,” El says, picking up his drawing.

Peter comes around and hugs her from behind, looking over her shoulder. “And there’s you, and me, and Satchmo. And Neal,” he says, pointing them out where Neal’s substituted them in for a few of the people in the original painting.

“A Saturday at the Burke household,” El amends. She glances back at Neal, sleeping peacefully, surrounded by all their love, and then up at Peter. “We did okay, didn’t we?”

Peter kisses her. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d say we did.”


End file.
